198 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, I42 



Funerals, opening the way of souls to Hades, ferrying the souls 

 across the river, praying for rain, praying souls out of purgatory or 

 hell, and reading or chanting sacred books are some of the ceremonies 

 performed by the priests in the homes or in the temples. The priests 

 are always paid for these services, but prices are not fixed. Poor 

 people pay less and wealthy people pay more, and this income is 

 shared by the priests and the temples. There are also voluntary con- 

 tributions by worshipers, and during the great festivals these contri- 

 butions amount to a great deal of money, for there are thousands of 

 worshipers. 



Sometimes priests are sent from house to house, from street to 

 street, and from town to town soliciting contributions. Generally a 

 priest does not leave one house and go to the next until a contribution 

 has been received. A priest taps on a bell or beats a piece of wood or 

 bamboo while soliciting. A prolonged noise at one house means that 

 the family is refusing to give, and it is so disgraceful to have the 

 neighbors know this that few can endure it very long and finally make 

 a contribution to get the priest to go along to the next house. Large 

 sums of money are sometimes collected in this way. 



By 1940 most temples had lost their property, and in many cases 

 the temples themselves were confiscated or occupied. Contributions 

 of all kinds had dwindled to a fraction of what they had been. 



The number of priests in any one temple varies with the size of 

 the temple and especially with the temple income, for the priests have 

 to be fed and clothed. It is evident that during the past half-century 

 the number of priests and nuns has diminished a great deal. In Suifu 



1 knew a young Buddhist priest who left the priesthood and joined 

 the army because no temple could or would support him. It is an 

 amazing fact that among 210 temples of Chengtu in 1944, 64 had 

 not a single priest or nun, and that in the remaining 146 temples, some 

 of which were very large, there were only 351 Buddhist and 212 

 Taoist priests, and 163 Buddhist and 32 Taoist nuns. These temples, 

 including 32 caretakers, thus had a total of only 790 priests, nuns, and 

 caretakers to minister to the needs of 700,000 people in Chengtu and 



2 or 3 million people in the nearby country. 



Why do men and women leave their homes and become monks or 

 nuns, with no families or descendants ? Some boys and girls are given 

 to the temples by their families, sometimes through a sense of guilt 

 because of the sins of one or more of its members or ancestors. Giving 

 a child, especially a son, is a meritorious act that will accumulate 

 merit enough for the whole family to overcome demerits due to sin. 



